Since the beginning,
human beings have been obsessed with the divine. Myriad of faiths and cultures
around the world have their own gods, their own customs and everyone thinks
their faith to be superior than the rest.
The subject of religion and faith has intrigued me since a long time and has motivated me to learn, unlearn and relearn newer things about it every day.
The process
of becoming an atheist started when I had entered the 20th year
of my journey on this planet and in the course of four years I transformed from
being a devout, god fearing believer to a rational and liberal atheist.
However, during the entire process I passed through several different stages
like becoming an agnostic in the start, then slowly and gradually my
inclination towards atheism escalated. Initially, the sudden transformation in
idea turned me into a militant atheist who deemed
anything and everything related to religion and god to be a farce
and a useless way of wasting one’s life.
With passing
time; as I got the opportunity to read, experience, interact and thereby learn
more about intricacies of faith and its rational implication or reasoning, it
turned me into a benign non-believer who is more open and tolerant towards the
concept of religion and god.
The title of
this article is inspired from a book written by Shaheed-e-Azam Sardar Bhagat
Singh named ‘Why I am an atheist?’.
Bhagat Singh has been a source of inspiration for me since my childhood and it
can be said that his influence made me question the existence of an all-encompassing,
omnipresent and omnipotent God who takes account of all our deeds and punishes
or bestows us with his blessings accordingly.
Question?
Now the
problem is that most of the people, when you tell them that you are an atheist,
tend to expect that you must not believe in anything related to God and
obviously that you reject the existence of any supreme power. But in my case, people get confused because I usually visit places of worship and also perform
several rituals with full respect and faith which makes them doubt my stand about the issue of religion and god.
However, I personally believe that anything or everything which is done in the name of religion either has a rational reason and meaning behind it or else it is just a distorted form of some old rituals which are passed on to generations since thousands of years. The problem arises when people don’t try to understand why they are doing something in the name of religion and just keep on doing it because of their conditioning or because they want to impress the good god above and ensure their name in his good books.
I do not denigrate or despise the importance of faith for humanity and thus I don’t reject the concept of god too. The interesting part is that all the civilizations and people living in ancient times that were not even connected to each other in any way, came up with the concept of God. Every civilization or group of people had their personal God and till now there are more than hundreds of small and big faiths practiced by people around the globe. Almost every faith and religion has a unique quality which is influenced by the living conditions and culture of the people who have created it.
However, I personally believe that anything or everything which is done in the name of religion either has a rational reason and meaning behind it or else it is just a distorted form of some old rituals which are passed on to generations since thousands of years. The problem arises when people don’t try to understand why they are doing something in the name of religion and just keep on doing it because of their conditioning or because they want to impress the good god above and ensure their name in his good books.
I do not denigrate or despise the importance of faith for humanity and thus I don’t reject the concept of god too. The interesting part is that all the civilizations and people living in ancient times that were not even connected to each other in any way, came up with the concept of God. Every civilization or group of people had their personal God and till now there are more than hundreds of small and big faiths practiced by people around the globe. Almost every faith and religion has a unique quality which is influenced by the living conditions and culture of the people who have created it.
Perhaps, the
dependence on God was what gave a meaning to their lives and a balance to their
society. Imagine a world without science and all the questions cropping up in
human’s mind about who created everything around them. The answer was perhaps a
supreme power, a God.
According to
the ‘Rig Veda’, the mother of all Vedas, “The first born was the Creative Will,
The primordial seed of the mind. All else followed.”
Now if this verse from Rig Veda does not make things clear then I must quote another verse from ‘Nasadiya Sutta’ which means the ‘Hymn of creation’. It says:
Now if this verse from Rig Veda does not make things clear then I must quote another verse from ‘Nasadiya Sutta’ which means the ‘Hymn of creation’. It says:
को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत्कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः ।
अर्वाग्देवा अस्य विसर्जनेनाथा को वेद यत आबभूव ॥६॥
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
To be continued...
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